Daniel Montoya granted with a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant

BC3 researcher Daniel Montoya has been granted with a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant to implement his project RECODYN. The main goal of ‘RECODYN’ is to is to determine the recovery rates and trajectories of biodiversity, community structure and ecosystem functioning in complex multitrophic communities, and how climate change and habitat fragmentation – two of the largest threats to biodiversity and ecosystems in terrestrial systems – influence those dynamics. To this end, he will use an integrative approach that combines the development of new theory on metacommunities and temperature-dependent food web dynamics in close dialogue with a unique long-term terrestrial mesocosm experiment.

“Having the opportunity to develop this project is a big joy for me and compensates many past sacrifices and rejections common to the scientific career. This project is the result of an integration of ideas from several fields of Ecology in order to understand ecosystem restoration. It is also the consequence of scientific and personal developments over the past years and across several countries and institutions, and of a little bit of luck as well. This ERC will be a key step to consolidate my career and create my own research group” says Montoya.

European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants is the first call for proposals under the EU’s new R&I programme, Horizon Europe. This grant has been given to researchers to help them launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their best ideas.

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About the ERC

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since 1 November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel. 

About Dr. Daniel Montoya

Daniel Montoya’s is Ikerbasque Research Associate at the BC3 since June 2021. His core background is on Community Ecology, and his research aims to understand how biodiversity is organized, and how it affects the functioning and stability of ecosystems. Montoya’s work explores the response of ecosystems to global change factors, such as climate change, and the loss and fragmentation of natural habitats. His ultimate goal is to contribute to an integrative and predictive theory of the effects of global change on ecosystems. The more applied side of Montoya’s research aims at using concepts, tools and approaches from ecological theory to help design more efficient restoration actions and to sustainably manage agricultural systems. Montoya’s research combines a diverse set of approaches: simulations and mathematical models, analysis of large datasets, field observations and experimental manipulations. This has allowed him to use theory, fieldwork and experiments as complementary tools to investigate global change ecology questions. Montoya has developed his research in different institutions and countries, mostly in Spain (University of Alcala, BC3), United States (University of California Irvine, Princeton University), United Kingdom (Bristol University) and France (INRA, CNRS).

About BC3

The Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) is an international, interdisciplinary research centre for the study of climate change and has its headquarters in Bilbao. The centre’s partners include Ikerbasque, the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country and Ihobe, the Basque Government’s Public Environmental Management Partnership; the centre is one of the BERCs (Basque Excellence Research Centres).

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